Upcoming Events

Past events & news

The first activity of the second phase of the PartiRep IUAP is a two-day PhD training and a kick off meeting.

The PhD training is organised in collaboration with the KULeuven Doctoral School. This training is open to all PhD researchers from Political Science, Sociology, Social Psychology and History, preferably in the first year of their PhD track. For all the new PhD researchers that we hire with the PARTIREP funds this training should be compulsory. Please make sure that your new researchers receive this information.

The second part of the programme is the kick-off day. The idea of the afternoon is to inform everybody about the details of the project and to make...

The first PartiRep Day deals with the intricacies of research designs in a broad project like PartiRep and consists of a lecture on multi-method research designs in political science by Prof. Dr. Ingo Rohlfing. Ingo Rohlfing is an Assistant Professor for Comparative Social Research at the Cologne Graduate School.

The afternoon session will be used to make a round-up of the various PartiRep projects on the Belgian municipal elections of October 2012.

On Thursday 7/2 and Friday 8/2, the Methodological Assistance and Support Team of the PartiRep project is organizing two sessions for its PhD students (one in Brussels and one in Antwerp). The aim of these sessions is to guide beginning researchers on the projects with the first steps in their PhD.

The setup of this PhD formation would be that each PhD student presents her/his project of doctoral dissertation as well as a planning regarding doctoral training. This can be an advanced proposal or a very basic draft with some general ideas and a lot of questions. Your drafts will be read by one other PhD candidate, and by the members of the MAST team, to ensure that you get all the...

On 19th April we will hold our 3rd bimonthly meeting of the PartiRep research network. The purpose of this plenary meeting is to discuss core issues in survey design – in particular: taking stock of innovations and cutting-edge practices in the field, so as to choose the best options for the PARTIREP surveys to be conducted in 2014.

If you plan to attend the PartiRep day, please register by e-mail through francoise.welvaert@uclouvain.be no later than Thursday 11 April.
In your e-mail, please specify which morning workshop you would like to attend (workshop A or B).
By default, registered participants are counted in...

PartiRep PhD Training Social Sciences
Jointly organized by the PhD Schools of the Free University of Brussels, University of Antwerp and University of Leuven

Leuven/Louvain

Belgium: The State of the Federation18.10.2013

posted by Tom Verthé • Other event

The Association Belge de Science Politique (ABSP) and the Vereniging voor Politieke Wetenschappen (VPW) are organizing their second conference on 'Belgium: the state of the federation' on Friday 18 October 2013 in Louvain-la-Neuve.

Erik Jones (Johns Hopkins Center Bologna) will deliver a keynote speech on 'Belgium and the eurozone crisis'. Some 20 papers on different aspects of Belgian politics will be presented and discussed. The conference will be concluded with a Round Table on the nationalization of the 2012 local elections.

A more detailed programme with information on how to register can be downloaded below.

In recent years, the relation between citizens and the state has changed dramatically. As electoral turnout and party membership have declined, political systems have implemented various new forms of democratic participation. Also in political science research, there is a growing interest in democratic innovation, with research on e.g. deliberative politics, referenda, ‘between election democracy’, and other emerging forms of citizen involvement. Research on this new field of democratic innovation requires both theoretical and empirical innovation, and it creates a number of new opportunities for comparative research.

In this seminar, we invite a number of leading authors on these topics,...

The PartiRep research team will organize its Annual Meeting on Friday 20th December at the VUB. The aim of this plenary meeting is to inform everybody about the many things that are going on in the network and to discuss our activities.

We plan a presentation of the activities per work package. First the WP leaders will give a general overview of what is going on, and then the PhD researchers will all briefly (for some 20 minutes) present their work.

Afterwards you are cordially invited to join us for drinks at the PartiRep Reception to kick off the holiday season.

PhD workshop with Prof. Dr. Shanto Iyengar on “Experimental Designs and its Practical Use for Political Science and Communication Research”23.04.2014

posted by Tom Verthé • Other event

Organized by the Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, KU Leuven

The Workshop

Although experimental designs are a well-established research method in the field of Psychology, experiments are far less common in the fields of Political Science and Communication Research. One of the main advantages of adopting an experimental approach is that the causality of relations can be investigated. In this workshop Professor Shanto Iyengar, who has a unique experience in the design of experiments to explore how the media influence public opinion, will elaborate on its advantages for Political Science and Communication Research. For this he will use practical examples from...

Expert seminar as part of The International Francqui chair by Prof. Shanto Iyengar

What is going on in US politics? For decades, American policymakers regularly crossed the aisle to get things done. Over time Republicans and Democrats have split apart and politics has become dysfunctional. How should this polarization be understood and what are the consequences? Do we see similar trends in Europe? Is consensus seeking still part of European democracies? Has the idea of compromise lost traction? In the US, the role of partisan media is seen as one of the explanations of this polarization. Are the news media in Europa also becoming more...

The first analyses of the 2014 PartiRep Voter Survey are in and will be published in cooperation with CRISP and Samenleving & Politiek. The PartiRep network is proud to present these first results during a press conference on Wednesday 24th September 2014 at the offices of Belgian Science Policy (Belspo).

The press releases in Dutch and French can be found at the bottom of this event page.

The CRISPpublication can be found here. The Sampol publication can be found at the bottom of this...

[ERRATUM: Accomodation and transportation will only be arranged for the guest speakers. Other participants will have to make their own arrangements.]

What counts, and what does not count as political participation? Owing to the rapid expansion of political activities in the last decades this question has become increasingly difficult to answer. At least since the 1960s, scholars have provided different conceptualizations of political participation. The concept has been broadened not only to reflect changes in theory but also in response to social and technological developments. As a result, a wide and ever increasing variety of definitions and conceptualizations are currently employed. Yet...

This PARTIREP day is organized by MAST. The core goal is to enable Ph.D. researchers to get some ‘fresh views’ on their ongoing research by discussing extensively about their project with senior researchers who aren’t their Ph.D. supervisors. The day is organized in 3 steps:

1. In the morning plenary session, each Ph.D. researcher who wants to take part in the speed dating presents, in short, his/her state of progress, with a focus on his/her core choices so far in terms of research design, data and methods. The plenary format enables everyone (including the senior PARTIREP researchers who will also take part in the...

Prof. dr. André Blais (Université de Montréal) will conduct a master class for PhD students on how to conduct research on voting behaviour. This is the first lecture of the Leuven-Montréal Winter School on Electoral Behaviour (Leuven,15-22 January 2015). This master class is open to all PhD students within the PartiRep network, please contact Ms. R. Dassonneville (Ruth.Dassonneville@soc.kuleuven.be). On Friday, January 16, prof. dr. Michael Lewis-Beck (University of Iowa) will conduct a similar master class on the theory of economic voting. Other professors at this Winter School are Patrick Fournier (Montréal), Claes de Vreese (Amsterdam) and Romain Lachat (Barcelona).

Voter Survey Workshop30.01.2015

posted by Tom Verthé • Bimonthly PartiRep meeting

On the 30th January 2015 we will organize our bimonthly PartiRep meeting. At this meeting the authors of the 2014 Voter Survey book will present and discuss their draft chapters.
The meeting schedule can be found at the bottom of this page. Please confirm your presence before Wednesday 28th January at 12:00 by sending an e-mail to tom.verthe@vub.ac.be.

First results of the 2014 PartiRep Belgian Election Study available in English31.01.2015

posted by Tom Verthé •

The first results of the 2014 PartiRep Belgian Election Study have been published in English by the Gerrit Kreveld Foundation and Samenleving en Politiek and can be dowloaded at the bottom of this page.

The findings had already been published in French by the CRISP and in Dutch by Samenleving en Politiek. Both texts and further information can be found here.

Ruth Dassonneville will be defending her PhD dissertation ("Stability and Change in Voting Behaviour - Macro and Micro Determinants of Electoral Volatility") on 20th May 2015 at the KU Leuven. You are all kindly invited, but please confirm your presence by 13th May by sending an e-mail to ruth.dassonneville@soc.kuleuven.be

PhD Training: Research Managament, 21-22 September 201521.09.2015 to 22.09.2015

posted by Marc Hooghe • PartiRep doctoral training

PhD Training: Research Management. How to complete your PhD project in a timely and successful manner.
With prof. Deschouwer, Marien, Walgrave and Hooghe.
Campus VUB, Ixelles. This PhD training is part of the Flames Summer School (Module 7).
(Note also Module 12 by prof. Carol Gilligan (known from 'In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development", Harvard University Press, 1982).)
To register:http://www.flames-statistics.eu/events/flames-summer-school-fss2015

The two Belgian political science associations – Vereniging voor Politieke Wetenschappen and Association belge francophone de science politique – organize their fourth conference on ‘Belgium: The State of the Federation’. After Brussels in 2011 and 2014, and Louvain-la- Neuve in 2013, the next edition will take place in Liège on Friday 18 December 2015, the last day before the winter break, as it has now become the tradition.

This conference will again be an excellent opportunity to present and discuss results of political science research on Belgian politics. While questions related to the nature and the future of federalism in Belgium remain hot, we welcome papers that deal with any aspect of Belgian politics. Electoral and...